Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

As someone who is relatively new to the Lincoln assassination, when I see a story like Lawrence Gardner’s, a number of questions come to mind:

* If there was no autopsy photo taken, why didn’t Holt, or Baker, or Eckert, or Bingham, or Barnes, or May, not to mention A. Gardner himself, say so when this became an issue?

From April 27, 1865, until well into the 1900s, there was widespread doubt that the body examined on the Montauk that night was Booth. This doubt was expressed in numerous newspaper articles and books, and even on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Indeed, Gardner said in his article that he was coming forth with his story because there were still many “gossips” wondering if Booth had escaped.

* How in the world would the lack of resemblance between the corpse and the living person be an excuse not to take a single autopsy photo? This was the crime of the century. Barnes was an experienced doctor. He knew what an autopsy was supposed to include. Holt was the Judge Advocate General of the United States. He certainly understood the evidentiary value of autopsy photos.

* At the very least, why would Holt and Baker et al not have ordered the taking of photos of the initials “JWB” and of the injured left leg? The autopsy photographer could have taken a profile picture of the body from a distance, which would have obscured the lack of resemblance, and then taken photos of the initials and the left leg and made sure that a few of the photos included enough of the corpse to make it clear that initials and the left leg were part of that corpse.

It is rather amazing that they failed to take a single common-sense action that would have made the identification solid.

* Why did the corpse look so different from Booth after just 10 days? The claim that Booth’s appearance underwent a radical change in just 10 days is unbelievable and untenable. Booth had a steady supply of food and water during those 10 days. He spent at least three nights of those 10 days indoors. No one’s face is going to become unrecognizable after just 10 days in such conditions.

The heavy freckling alone casts severe doubt on the ID of the body as Booth. No one is going to magically become heavily freckled from limited exposure to the elements over a 10-day period. As I’ve mentioned, when I was in the Army, I went on multi-week training exercises in the Mojave Desert where my fellow soldiers and I were exposed to intense sunlight and heat for many hours each day, and I never saw anyone sprout freckles as a result.

And let us remember that Lafayette Baker let slip that the body looked “fairly preserved” when he saw it on the Montauk. So if the body was Booth, it should have looked like Booth and should not have caused Dr. May to proclaim that the body bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth.

To get some idea of how ludicrous it is to claim that Booth’s appearance changed so radically in only 10 days that his corpse did not look like him, go look at photos of Holocaust survivors taken right after they were liberated, or while they were prisoners, and then look at photos of those same persons taken before the war and years after the war. In many cases, we have are before, during, and after photos of survivors. Find me just one case where the survivor’s appearance changed so radically that the person was unrecognizable in photos taken of them when they were liberated or when they were still imprisoned. When you look at such photos, you can see that they obviously look much thinner and weakened in the imprisonment/liberation photos, but you can still identify them from pre-war and post-war photos—you can still see the resemblance between all three sets of photos.

Given the statements that the body did not resemble Booth, it is almost comical that so many of the identification witnesses claimed that they recognized the body as Booth from its “general appearance.”

* I can’t help but return again to the obvious question: If anyone who looked at the body that night had actually noticed the tattooed initials “JWB” on the body, would they not have immediately pointed out this significant evidence to everyone else? That would have been the natural reaction: “Hey, look at this! Here are Booth’s initials! Right here.”

* What about the obvious errors in Gardner's story?

For example, Garnder claimed that he saw the initials “JWB” on the left “forearm,” but Booth’s sister said the initials were on the hand. So did McPhail. There is a recognizable difference between a person’s hand and their forearm.

Gardner also said that the letters JWB were surrounded by “a wreath of stars,” a feature that no one else described. Dawson said nothing about the initials being surrounded by stars. Nor did McPhail.

Furthermore, Gardner claimed that the neck scar was found only after Dr. May described it to Dr. Barnes. Said Gardner,

“Dr. May described the appearance of this [the scar] to Surgeon-General Barnes, and when the garments were cut open the scar was found.”

But Dr. May said the exact opposite. He said that after he expressed disbelief that the body was Booth, he asked Dr. Barnes if there was a scar on the neck, and that Barnes said there was. So, according to Dr. May, Barnes had already seen the neck scar before he asked him about it.

[RJNorton]

(10-14-2018 08:13 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  For example, Garnder claimed that he saw the initials “JWB” on the left “forearm,” but Booth’s sister said the initials were on the hand. So did McPhail. There is a recognizable difference between a person’s hand and their forearm.

Richard B. Garrett also said arm.

The June 8, 1903, edition of the Alexandria Gazette contained an interview with Richard H. Garrett’s youngest son, Reverend Dr. Richard B. Garrett. The interview was titled "I SAW JOHN WILKES BOOTH KILLED." At the time of the interview Reverend Garrett was the pastor of the Court Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia. In the interview, Reverend Garrett said:

"The slayer of President Lincoln died in my father’s barn. His remains were most thoroughly identified from a photograph and the printed description that was possessed by the soldiers. There is not the shadow of a doubt but that his wild life was ended by Sergeant Corbett’s bullet. I was there and was present at the identification. I know how thorough it was because it was the first intimation that my father had entertained for two days as his guest as an injured stranger in need -- the slayer of President Lincoln. I know how surprised we all were when it dawned upon us that the man lying dead before us could be no other than Booth. There were the tattoo marks of his initials on his arm, and the comparison with the picture was perfect. God never made two men exactly alike as the dead man and the one whose photograph there could be no doubt was Booth’s. Point by point the printed description held in the detective’s hand was followed out. Height, color of hair and eyes, every scar and mark tallied exactly. The crowning evidence of course, was the name of the actor done in India ink on his arm."

[L Verge]

Over the years, we have had to deal with doubting Thomases who question exactly where that tattoo was on Booth - hand or arm. By today's standards, we want to be specific, but our ancestors were not that concerned with pinpointing exact locations of scars, birthmarks, tattoos, and other identifying marks on the human body when giving a general description.

I believe that the experts in the field go with a description (perhaps by Asia) of it being between the thumb and forefinger; but not low around the "web" portion, more towards the wrist where the hand was firmer and where it was easier for a young boy to successfully guide his hand into carving his initials.

---

Mr. Griffith - If you are going to continue to spout the same questionable comments over and over even after others are contributing documentable and/or reasonable answers, why are we keeping this going?

[RJNorton]

A person aboard the Montauk who said he saw the J.W.B. initials was John Peddicord. The article below is from the Roanoke Evening News, June 6, 1903, and it was posted last year by another forum member.

(You need to be logged in to see the article.)

I might add that Asia Booth Clarke's memoir was still unpublished at the time of Peddicord's statement, so he would not have known that she had written, "He had perfectly shaped hands, and across the back of one he had clumsily marked, when a little boy, his initials in India ink."

In the article Peddicord noted that the letters were "in pale, straggling characters, 'J.W.B.', as a boy would have done it."

[mikegriffith1]

(10-09-2018 12:28 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(10-09-2018 11:47 AM)Warren Wrote:  I'm confused. If it wasn't Booth who was shot in the barn, then who was it?

Warren, one theory is that it was actually a man named James W. Boyd who was killed at Garrett's. The late Dr. William Hanchett deals with and debunks this theory in The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.

I hope this link works:

CLICK HERE.

I do not think that Hanchett debunks the idea that it was James W. Boyd. I find his treatment just as lacking as I do his dismissal of the Baker cipher notes.

The Garretts said the man in the barn called himself Boyd. The other man who was inside the barn told Lt. Doherty that the man's name was Boyd. When Herold was first interviewed by Bingham, he said the man in the barn's name was Boyd.

The Garretts also insisted that the man in the barn was dressed in gray. Supporting the Garretts' account, two soldiers who were there when the man in the barn was shot stated in 1922 that the man was wearing a Confederate uniform.

Dr. Robert Arnold makes an additional point on this matter: Booth would have had no reason to go to the Garrett home:

Quote:Why would Booth agree to stay at the Garretts' farm? He was only three miles from the Rappahannock and still in a great deal of danger. It was only 8:00 PM. He could have easily made it to Bowling Green, which would have great expedited his escape. It would seem foolish to forego a chance for no good reason. The answer is that the man at the Garretts' was not John Wilkes Booth but James Boyd. Booth and Herold left Port Royal with Jett, Bainbridge, and Ruggles, but when they passed the Trappe House, there were only four of them. At some point, Booth was hidden in a safe house, somewhere between the Rappahannock and the Trappe House. Since the ladies of the Trappe House witnessed the transfer of the horses from the Union soldiers to Mosby's men, it was probably close to the Trappe House. (The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Louisville: Windsaloft Publishing, 2016, p. 188).

(10-09-2018 12:28 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Also, On p. 17 of the Surratt Society publication entitled "The Body in the Barn," Lincoln assassination expert Mr. James O. Hall states that Boyd was murdered in his hometown, Jackson, Tennessee, on January 1, 1866.

Leonard Guttridge:

Quote:Claiming that the Confederate Captain James W. Boyd's middle name was Waters, as Steers-Chaconas do, may to the reader seem a very small error. But this one has special significance. Most of the confusion springs from garbled family records. There was neither space nor necessity in Dark Union for the story of more than one James W. Boyd. It can be summarized here. First, James William Boyd of the 6th Tennessee Infantry, Confederate States Army, in February 1865 as a prisoner of war cut a deal with Secretary Stanton for permission to go home to Jackson, Tennessee, to take care of his seven motherless children. Steers-Chaconas are remiss in failing to mention that not only did Boyd refer to Caroline Boyd as deceased in his February 14, 1865 appeal to Stanton for a private interview, in December 1864, writing to William P. Wood, chief of the Old Capitol Prison, he makes clear that his wife had died. The proof is easily found in War Department records at the National Archives. Within twenty-four hours of his request for a personal interview with Stanton, Boyd was released. There his official record ends.

The other James W. Boyd? His middle name was Waters and he was born in Ireland in 1807. He became sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, in the 1830s. He fought a two-hours bare-knuckles fight in a horse pasture outside Purdy with a Joel Rowark whom he had wrongfully arrested for horse-stealing and the Rowarks swore vengeance. Their chance came during the Civil War when Boyd, accompanied by two Chickasaw Indians named Ollie and Ossie Feather, rode with the Union colonel, Fielding Hurst, and acquired a reputation for killing and torturing Confederate prisoners of war.

A rebel military posse ambushed Boyd near Sweet Lips Creek and hanged his Indians. Boyd escaped. On January 1, 1866, he was at the Jackson railroad depot awaiting the train for Nashville where he expected to sign on as a deputy federal marshal. There Joel Rowark's son killed him with a shotgun. Self-defense, the local sheriff decided and rewarded Billy with $500.

Certain “assassination experts” hoped that discovery of Captain James W. Boyd's grave in Tennessee would bolster their claim that he couldn't have been the man killed at Richard H. Garrett's farm in Virginia eight months earlier. They reportedly searched, and found nothing. We searched and, led by a descendant of Colonel Fielding Hurst, found James W. Boyd's grave, the stone half sunken but plainly bearing his name. And the date 1807-1866. This obviously was not Captain Boyd's grave, who was born in 1822. Moreover, nearby we saw and photographed stones that marked where the Feather brothers were buried, side by side.

What set the “experts” on a course of error? Robert Cartmell, a local farmer who periodically entered Jackson and picked up items of gossip, kept a journal. He learned of the shooting at the railroad depot but identified the victim as James W. Boyd, “who was a Lieut. in 6th Regmt of Tennessee Vol.” A Nashville newspaper reference to the shooting of James W. Boyd in Jackson on New Year's Day names his killer Rowark, but gives the victim no military title.

According to Steers-Chaconas, Dark Union dates Caroline Boyd's death as January 5, 1866. It does nothing of the sort. This shouldn't be overlooked because the sources Steers-Chaconas rely upon give that date for the death of James Waters Boyd's wife, not the Confederate captain's. ("In Defense of Dark Union," https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/3873)

I am not unalterably wed to the idea that the man in the barn was Boyd, but I think there are some decent indications that he might have been. Any poor unfortunate soul could have been chosen to play the role. When Lafayette Baker's cousin, Lt. Luther Baker, took off with the body for several hours, he had ample time to change the clothes, create a scar on the back of the neck by burning an area of skin (if the person didn't already have a scar there), put an ink tattoo on a hand, etc., etc. (however, given the questionable evidence that anyone actually saw a tattoo on the body at the autopsy on the Montauk, I'm not sure this was done).

[L Verge]

I was good friends with Bill Hanchett - trust me, he thought the Booth escaped theory was rubbish also. As for the consistent use of the name "Boyd" during the escape, have you ever heard the term "cover story?" Just as Booth posed as a prospective buyer of farmland in Southern Maryland in 1864 (cover story), is it impossible to consider that using a fake name was part of his cover during his flight? Remember that he used a different name at Mudd's house.

As for your last paragraph where you accuse Luther Baker of altering the clothing and defacing the body of Booth -- come on now, give us a break!

If you are considering authoring a book on the escape of John Wilkes Booth, may I suggest that you term it a historical novel?

[mikegriffith1]

(10-17-2018 05:43 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I was good friends with Bill Hanchett - trust me, he thought the Booth escaped theory was rubbish also.

I have already noted that Hanchett rejected the Booth-escaped theory. He also rejected the Baker cipher notes, and he cited as his main reason for doing so the widely accepted but demonstrably erroneous claim that Lincoln and the Radicals were really not that far apart on Reconstruction.

http://miketgriffith.com/files/boothescaped.pdf

(10-17-2018 05:43 PM)L Verge Wrote:  As for the consistent use of the name "Boyd" during the escape, have you ever heard the term "cover story?" Just as Booth posed as a prospective buyer of farmland in Southern Maryland in 1864 (cover story), is it impossible to consider that using a fake name was part of his cover during his flight? Remember that he used a different name at Mudd's house.

Then why didn't he use the name "Boyd" at Mudd's house? What about the gray clothing? Furthermore, we know that Boyd was in the area of Garrett's farm and that he was seen using a crutch.

And what about the powerful medical evidence that the shot that killed the corpse examined on the Montauk traveled at a substantially downward angle? I'm not just talking about Dr. Arnold's analysis but also the analysis that was done by a team of forensic pathologists from the NMHM and the AFIP in 1993. I quote:

Quote:. . . a team of forensic pathologists and anthropologists for the National Museum of Health and Medicine and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology examined the vertebrae and spinal cord and were able to establish that the fatal wound entered high on the right and exited low on the left side of the neck, that it was not self-inflicted. . . . (Gretchen Worden, "Is It the Body of John Wilkes Booth?", Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 5:16, December 1994, p. 78, emphasis added)

This contradicts all the accounts of what the man in the barn was doing just before he was shot. And this is not to mention the forensic and documentary evidence that the bullet was a rifle bullet and not a pistol bullet.

(10-17-2018 05:43 PM)L Verge Wrote:  As for your last paragraph where you accuse Luther Baker of altering the clothing and defacing the body of Booth -- come on now, give us a break! If you are considering authoring a book on the escape of John Wilkes Booth, may I suggest that you term it a historical novel?

Then why did Baker take off with the body for several hours? Why? Give me some rational, reasonable explanation for such an apparently suspicious action. And do you have any idea how many murder cases there are on record where the perpetrators tried to alter the appearance of the body? Have you never heard of cases where the bad guys swapped their victim's body with someone else's body to try to cover up their crime?

And then there are the obvious questions of, Why did the body on the Montauk look so different from Booth? Why did the body look so unlike Booth that Major Eckert did not even want any autopsy photos taken? Why was the face of the body "very much freckled," yet Booth was not freckled?

[L Verge]

And, we are back to going in circles because you will never accept common sense or documentable facts. You also have the habit of not citing sources, and please do not try to use Gretchen Worden (now deceased) as one of your crutches because some of us knew and admired her.

As for the path of the bullet, I believe that I have cited before a very credible explanation that Mike Kauffman used. Booth started for the door to escape the flames, but movement onto his injured leg caused him to limp down on that side. Corbett had aimed for Booth's shoulder in order to have him drop the weapon, but the downward position caused by the limp changed the trajectory of the bullet.

My final comment here is: Have you visited Caroline County, Virginia, and mastered the road systems as they existed in April of 1865? Do you know the exact route that Luther Baker used in order to get to the John S. Ide? Have you considered that he may have strayed inadvertently in a wrong direction and used valuable time in getting back on the route?

I just bet that you would honestly have to reply NO to at least three of those questions -- so would I. Until you literally walk that walk and do the research to talk the talk, you will continue to have me disagreeing with you -- not that that will affect your paycheck...

[Steve]

Here's a link to the article by Gretchen Worden that Laurie cited:

https://archive.org/details/transactions...ll/page/66

---

Correction: The link is to the article Mike mentioned two posts above. I mistakenly thought he was quoting an earlier post by Laurie.

[mikegriffith1]

(10-14-2018 08:58 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Richard B. Garrett also said arm. [SNIP]

"The slayer of President Lincoln died in my father’s barn. His remains were most thoroughly identified from a photograph and the printed description that was possessed by the soldiers. There is not the shadow of a doubt but that his wild life was ended by Sergeant Corbett’s bullet. I was there and was present at the identification. I know how thorough it was because it was the first intimation that my father had entertained for two days as his guest as an injured stranger in need -- the slayer of President Lincoln. I know how surprised we all were when it dawned upon us that the man lying dead before us could be no other than Booth. There were the tattoo marks of his initials on his arm, and the comparison with the picture was perfect. God never made two men exactly alike as the dead man and the one whose photograph there could be no doubt was Booth’s. Point by point the printed description held in the detective’s hand was followed out. Height, color of hair and eyes, every scar and mark tallied exactly. The crowning evidence of course, was the name of the actor done in India ink on his arm."

I take it you believe these claims? I do not. If he saw a mirror image between the corpse and whatever photograph of Booth he was talking about, one wonders what body Lawrence Gardner and John May saw.

And I guess these folks who belatedly claimed they saw the initials were unable to tell the difference between a hand, a wrist, and an arm. It's really not that hard to distinguish between the three.

I get it that some here find the theory that Booth escaped to be incredible and unbelievable. Well, I find the identification on the Montauk to be incredible and unbelievable. Just imagine if a prosecutor walked into a courtroom and tried to explain the lack of a single crime-scene photo of the alleged, and now buried and unavailable, murder rifle in a case, and imagine what any sensible judge would say in response, such as what follows:

Quote:Prosecutor: Well, Your Honor, the detectives decided not to take any photos of the murder rifle at the crime scene because the weapon looked very different from the murder rifle when it was fired.

Judge: Huh? What do you mean the rifle at the crime scene did not look like the murder rifle when it was fired? Is this some kind of joke?

Prosecutor: Well, uh, you see, due to the fact that the rifle was thrown on the ground several times after it was fired at the victim, the rifle bore no resemblance to how it looked when it was fired. However, we have two witnesses at the scene who say they saw a large scratch on the rifle's
barrel, and the original owner said there was a large scratch on the barrel. Also, we have one witness at the scene who says he saw the killer's initials in the middle of the rifle's stock, although the original owner said the initials were on the part of the stock that was close to the trigger.

Judge: Okay, did the detectives at least take a picture of the initials and the scratch?

Prosecutor: Uh. . . . Well. . . . Ummm. . . . Actually, no, they didn't.

Judge: What?! Why in the devil not?!

Prosecutor: Well, uh, uh, because the rifle looked nothing like it looked when it was fired.

Judge: Are you drunk? Were they drunk? What kind of an excuse is that not to take crime-scene photos of the weapon or at least the parts where they saw potentially distinguishing marks?

Prosecutor: Yeah, well, I'll have to ask them that question! But, we have several witnesses at the scene who say they were able to identify the rifle as the murder weapon by its general appearance.

Judge: Its "general appearance"? You just said that the detectives didn't take any crime-scene photos of the rifle because it looked nothing like it looked when it was fired! So how in the world would these witnesses have "identified" the rifle by "its general appearance"?

Prosecutor: [Thinks to himself, "Gosh, that is a very good question!"] Well, Your Honor, we do have the two witnesses who say they saw the scratch on the barrel and the one witness who says he saw the initials on the stock!

Judge: This "large scratch": Did either of the witnesses describe its length and width and any distinctive features in their statements given that evening?

Prosecutor: Well, about that. . . . Uh . . . no. They just said it was "a large scratch."

Judge: So how do you know that it's the same scratch that the original owner said was on the barrel of his rifle?

Prosecutor: Humm. . . . Uh. . . . Well, I guess I don't know.

Judge: Uh-huh, and when the one witness on the scene who supposedly saw the initials noticed the initials on the rifle at the scene, did he point them out to any of the detectives or police officers who were there?

Prosecutor: Uh, well, uh, we have no record that he did.

Judge: What?! Are you kidding me? He said nothing to anyone there about seeing the initials?

Prosecutor: For some reason, no, he didn't.

Judge: Uh, okay. That's very odd, to say the least. Did either of the detectives make a note of the initials in their reports?

Prosecutor: [Blank stare]

Judge: Hello?

Prosecutor: Uh, well, shucks, for some reason or another neither of them said a word about the initials in the reports they wrote right after they processed the crime scene.

Judge: Well, do any of the crime-scene reports done by the police officers mention the initials?

Prosecutor: Uh. . . . Humm. . . . Well, actually, technically speaking . . . no, they don't mention them either.

My gut reaction is, Are you kidding me? This is the "persuasive case" that Booth was shot in the barn and that it was his body that was examined on the Montauk? No surviving autopsy photo. Not even a picture of the initials or the scar. No identification witnesses who knew Booth well, even though many were readily available, including a few below deck, were asked to ID the body. Only one of the ID witnesses supposedly noticed "JWB" initials on a "hand" but didn't breathe a word about them to anyone else who was there. The man's dentist supposedly showed up but left no report, was not interviewed by Holt, and was not even listed as one of the witnesses. Two of the people on the boat said the body was heavily freckled, but Booth was not freckled--and one of them said that everyone was shocked at how much the body did *not* look like Booth, and the other said that he had *never* seen a corpse that had changed in appearance so much from how the person looked in life. Etc., etc., etc.

This the case that is supposed to be so ironclad that it is self-evidently true? On the contrary, I would say that this case is so shot full of holes that it is self-evidently unbelievable and suspicious.

[L Verge]

While searching for an answer to someone else's question today, I referred to Terry Alford's Fortune's Fool and then flipped to the inquest portion to see what Terry had to say: pp. 316-322, "...Fred Oarley...jumped up to observe the heavyweights [coming on board the USS Mahopac] Brig Gen. Joseph Holt, JAG of the Army, Congressman John A. Bingham, Republican stalwart from Ohio; Col. Lafayette C. Baker, head of the National Detective Police; Dr. Joseph Barnes, Surgeon-General of the U.S.; Major Thomas T. Eckert,...chief of the War Department telegraph office. Stanton and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had dispatched these men to the Washington Navy Yard to examine the remains of Booth, which reposed on the nearby Montauk. ...one reached the Montauk by use of the Mahopac's small cutter, Oarley was pressed into duty as ferryman for the officials." Here, I will resort to bullet points to get the main points across:

* ...Barnes stepped onto the Montauk as if he owned it and went immediately to the carpenter's bench , took a knife, and cut away the wrappings of the corpse (remember that Booth had been sewed into blankets at the Garrett house).
* "That's it," said Patrick Stafford, one of the Montauk's firemen standing nearby. "That's Booth." "Look at that," said Dr. George B. Todd, the vessel's surgeon, pointing to the marks on Booth's left hand. "What do you make that out to be?" Stafford leaned in to take a look, then straightened up. "J.W.B."
* Barnes had doubts that the soldiers had caught Booth. New York newspapers had described the actor as a "whilom fop," but the body was no longer that of a dandy. soiled clothing, remains smelled. hair was ineptly clipped and badly matted, no mustache at all, just a stubble of beard. The face was wild and worn and older than its years. The lower part was discolored by extravasation of blood -- freckled.
* Hundreds wanted to see also, but most were turned away at the Navy Yard gate, but dozens got an opportunity - steady stream of officers, sailors, marines, yard employees, carpenters, mechanics, and lucky civilian visitors.
* One of those allowed on was Seaton Munroe, whose brother was a Marine captain. Munroe was also a lawyer and man-about-town who knew Booth personally, so he was invited by Eckert to view the body. "I was soon gazing at the remains which needed no long inspection to enable me to recognize them." Munroe gave a statement to that effect to Holt and company. "I am confident that it is the dead body of John Wilkes Booth."
* Dr. May described the scar without looking at it so well that Barnes remarked on it. May said it would appear as an ugly scar or a burn rather than a proper surgical incision since it had been torn open while healing. May also asked that the body be put in a sitting position so that he could study the face. After careful scrutiny, May saw the familiar features and declared that he had no doubt that it was Booth's body.
* The autopsy began at 2 pm under an awning. Barnes removed the dressing around the body's left leg -- swollen and black to the knee, looked dreadful -- small artery had ruptured, resulting in considerable hemorrhaging under the skin -- fractured bone had cut its way through the flesh and protruded -- the wound had become gangrenous -- in one opinion, Booth could not have lived many more days. None of this was mentioned by Barnes in his official statement. However, it is consistent with Ruggles's or Bainbridge's later description.
* Barnes and Dr. J.J. Woodward raised the corpse again and measured the death wound to the half inch. Body lowered and board placed under the shoulders so that the head dropped backwards to expose the neck. Barnes used dissecting scissors and a spine chisel to open the neck and excise the affected vertebrae. Munroe saw "mutilated bone and viscera and blood-stained rags" from where he was standing. A Private Landes later wrote in his diary that it looked like a decapitation, "First man I seen without a head."
* The doctors duly noted the obvious: killed by a bullet fired at a distance of a few yards, fractured vertebrae and perforated spinal cord traveling through the neck with a slight inclination downward and to the rear. Large blood vessels were untouched - general paralysis immediate.
* "Booth must have suffered as much as if he had been broken on the wheel," observed Dr. Woodward.
* Vertebrae three to five as well as a piece of whitish spinal cord were wrapped in stout brown paper and given to the new Army Medical Museum. Barnes's messenger George Hallowell, was handed a piece of muscle tissue with embedded bone fragments. Body was resewn into its shroud of army blankets.

All of this is carefully cited in Dr. Alford's notes, and I have to add that having known Terry for over thirty years - about twenty of which were research years - he depends heavily on primary sources and documented secondary sources.

And now, Mr. Griffith, since you are convincing very few of us (hopefully none), and we will obviously never convince you, why don't we just hang this topic up and stop repeating the same things over and over again? Is there another, unrelated Lincoln topic that you might have questions about?

[J. Beckert]

(10-19-2018 04:17 PM)L Verge Wrote:  * "That's it," said Patrick Stafford, one of the Montauk's firemen standing nearby. "That's Booth." "Look at that," said Dr. George B. Todd, the vessel's surgeon, pointing to the marks on Booth's left hand. "What do you make that out to be?" Stafford leaned in to take a look, then straightened up. "J.W.B."

Dr. Todd was also very close to the box and gave one of the most detailed accounts of Booth's entry.

[mikegriffith1]

(10-19-2018 04:17 PM)L Verge Wrote:  * ...Barnes stepped onto the Montauk as if he owned it and went immediately to the carpenter's bench , took a knife, and cut away the wrappings of the corpse (remember that Booth had been sewed into blankets at the Garrett house). [You're assuming it was Booth, but Garrett said the man's name was Boyd, and even Townsend believed that the weight of the evidence showed that the man was dressed in gray clothing, but let's continue.--MTG.]
* "That's it," said Patrick Stafford, one of the Montauk's firemen standing nearby. "That's Booth." "Look at that," said Dr. George B. Todd, the vessel's surgeon, pointing to the marks on Booth's left hand. "What do you make that out to be?" Stafford leaned in to take a look, then straightened up. "J.W.B."

Okay, let's stop right there. Now, if this additional and very belated claim (given in 1926, 61 years after the fact) that "oh, yeah, I saw his initials too" is true, then:

* If this really happened right in front of Barnes right after he cut away the wrapping, why oh why didn't Barnes mention the initials when Dr. May told him that the body looked nothing like Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth? This would have been the perfect time for Barnes to say, "Oh, but doctor, look: Here are Booth's initials on the left hand. Dr. Todd pointed them out right after I cut open the wrapping."

* Why didn't anyone else who was standing nearby, some of whom surely would have heard Todd and Stafford, point out the initials to Dr. May?

It just defies all common sense and reason that no one there would have mentioned the initials when Dr. May so emphatically said he could not believe the body was Booth when he first saw it after the tarp was removed.

* If the initials were so obvious that Dr. Todd noticed them but could not read them (Stafford had to lean in and read them), how did all of the identification witnesses, except for Dawson's after-the-fact doubtful and convenient claim to Holt, miss them?

* And, again, why didn't any of the doctors who were there to observe the body mention the initials in any of their reports?

You can dig up a zillion of these oh-so-convenient belated witnesses who later decided that they remembered seeing initials on the hand/wrist/arm/forearm, but someone needs to credibly explain why in the world, then, neither May, nor Barnes, nor Woodward, nor Holt, nor Baker, etc., etc., said a word about seeing the initials that night. In reading Holt's questioning of the witnesses after the autopsy, it's readily apparent that he knew nothing about any initials until Dawson claimed he had seen them.

(10-19-2018 04:17 PM)L Verge Wrote:  * Barnes had doubts that the soldiers had caught Booth. New York newspapers had described the actor as a "whilom fop," but the body was no longer that of a dandy. soiled clothing, remains smelled. hair was ineptly clipped and badly matted, no mustache at all, just a stubble of beard. The face was wild and worn and older than its years. The lower part was discolored by extravasation of blood -- freckled.

One, extravasation of blood is not freckling. It is discoloration. Go check any number of online forensic/medical sources on the symptoms/signs of extravasation: they are swelling, erythema (reddening), and blistering.

Second, L. Gardner said that the body had "quite a growth of beard," not just stubble, in addition to saying that the face--not just part of the face, but the face--was "very much freckled." Who would describe "quite a growth of beard" as "just a stubble of beard"?

Third, why would the hair have been "ineptly clipped"? Booth took great care to maintain his hair and facial appearance. Barnes' description of the hair sounds a lot more appropriate for what we would expect of a common soldier (Boyd?) or a low-income person. Booth's flight had not been some ravaging ordeal in the Amazon. He spent the night indoors for at least three nights of those 10 days, and he had a steady supply of food and water. Furthermore, based on Townsend's research, we can logically and credibly assume that he had at least one more chance to shave after he left Dr. Mudd's house.

[L Verge]

I guess you paid no attention to the last paragraph of my last post - as usual. Time to say "Goodnight, Gracie."
Constant repetition of the same debatable material is not good for the brain or the nerves.

[Gene C]

I think we have reached a very important step in this discussion and that we can unanimously agree that Booth is dead.
At least I haven't heard a dissenting voice on that.

For me, there are some interesting statements on both sides of the discussion whether Booth was killed at Garrett's farm, but the majority of the evidence seems to favor that Booth was shot and died at Garrett's. The lack of a photograph of Booth's dead body doesn't tilt the scales of evidence one way or another.